Esteemed pianist Maurizio Pollini, now on a North American tour, remains at the peak of his keyboard prowess.

The New York Times writes: “This recital [Oct. 21] confirmed that he was pushing further and harder than ever before. Take Schumann’s Kreisleriana, blurred yet vital in its details like a late Turner canvas, full of harmonic yearning in the second section, as darkly knotty as Liszt’s atonal flirtations in the fourth, rashly dismissive of an attempt at formal coherence in the eighth part’s fugue. Here and in the “rabeske, Mr. Pollini proved unusually ruminative, a reminder that ‘your old men shall dream dreams.’ “

Pollini will perform the same program Oct. 26 in an SCP Piano Series recital at Orchestra Hall.

From the Boston Globe: “As Pollini gets older — at 72 he is the dean of living pianists — the standard repertoire sounds increasingly radical under his fingers. … The first half of Pollini’s Celebrity Series recital in Symphony Hall  was given over to contrasting poles of Schumann’s art. Kreisleriana is perhaps the composer’s most darkly rhapsodic creation, while the Arabesque (Op. 18) is all urbane refinement.”

From the Boston Classical Review: “One was a guest in the Kingdom of Pollini, and this was how music is played there.  The critic is invited to have a look around, and describe what he sees. … One saw something of a lion in winter, at 72 slowed more by illness than by age.”